by Tessa Bailey
“Oh my God,” she croaked when icy cold water rushed up her ankles and licked at her knees. “It’s eighty degrees. Shouldn’t you be warm?”
There was no choice but to wade in farther after coming this far. It hurt, though. She wanted to be back on top of Sigmund Freud cultivating a tan, not courting hypothermia.
Olive heard her whining conscience and frowned at the horizon. She’d left the comfort of her parents’ mini-mansion—complete with heated pool—to make a real change. They could cast her aside in the name of Internet fame, but she’d made the decision to leave Oklahoma for New York. She’d taken control of the separation this time, so they couldn’t do it for her. Now that she was on her own in this big, unfamiliar place, she wouldn’t stay stuck in a bedroom listening to life take place on the other side of her door.
She took a deep breath, whimpered under her breath, and let her body drop beneath the surface of the water. It covered her head with a rushing foam gurgle, before the world around her turned muted. Bluish green pushed against her lids, allowing her to see the color even with her eyes closed. It was such a glorious and beautiful rush, she forgot to be cold. When she emerged from the surface again, she couldn’t contain the laugh that bubbled up in her throat. Totally worth leaving her books to gather dust for the afternoon.
Kids on top of boogie boards were carried toward the shore by waves. They were probably half her age, so she had zero reservations about freestyle swimming farther into the murky blue, letting the sounds of the shore recede, stopping only when her feet could no longer touch sand. After a few minutes of letting herself drift, she decided to swim back to shore, march right up to Rory and…force him into a pleasant conversation. Yup. That would show him. He might have lamented their age gap, but she’d prove being young didn’t amount to being immature.
With that plan in mind, Olive let a wave crest over her and started to kick. She couldn’t seem to make any progress toward shore, though. Her position never changed, only shifting her sideways…or farther out. Was she drifting farther out?
That’s when she heard a whistle pierce the afternoon air—and she knew it was for her.
“Oh God. No, no, no…this isn’t happening.” She swam as hard as she could, losing steam after about ten seconds and attempting to reach the bottom of the ocean floor with her toes. She didn’t even scrape it. She did, however, become very aware of a separate current running down near her feet. Undertow. Unbelievable. She’d gotten stuck in an undertow.
A wave broke over Olive’s head, but not before she made out the blurry figure cutting toward her in the water at a fast clip, a red flotation device dragging along the surface behind him. Her lack of glasses prevented her from making out exact details—and then she couldn’t see anything. A healthy dose of water was sucked up through her nose when she tried to breathe. Panic made her flail, even though she knew it would burn energy. She couldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop trying to remain on the surface where the oxygen lived. I’m drowning. I’m going to drown. Why did I leave my books? They’ve been so good to me.
An arm wrapped around her chest and she instinctively tried to fight the restriction, thinking it would drag her farther down. She twisted, her vision nothing but blurred blues and greens, fear roaring in her ears.
“I’ve got you, sunbeam. Easy. I’m here to help you.”
The imploring voice near her ear ceased her struggles immediately. Rory. That’s right. It was Rory, not some angry sea monster hell bent on drowning her. Within seconds, he had her face up, the flotation device pressed securely to her chest.
“Hold onto this while I get you back to shore. Wrap your arms around it. Good girl.” Was it her imagination or did he brush a kiss over her hair? “Goddammit,” he rasped, starting to swim. “Didn’t you hear me whistling? You just kept…I saw you go under…”
If Olive wasn’t totally spent after battling the sea gods, she would have said something to comfort Rory. He sounded so upset. But coming down from her adrenaline surge and landing in a pile of relief made her almost drowsy, so she could only listen, realizing absently that Rory had been required to save her life twice in twenty-four hours.
How humiliating.
Even more embarrassing was how fast they reached the shore after she’d been unable to swim an inch in the same direction. Her feet slid backward in the sand and then she was hoisted into Rory’s arms, the top of her head finding a home under his chin without conscious thought. They were surrounded by an applauding crowd as Rory walked them up the beach, and the tension in his shoulders told Olive he didn’t like the attention they were getting.
“Talk to me,” he said, leaning down to search her eyes. “I got to you in time. Right? Look, I just really need you to talk to me.”
Which one of them was shaking? “I’m fine. I’m just cold.”
“Cold. Okay.” Seeming relieved that he had a problem to work on, Rory picked up the pace to a stride, leaving their audience in the dust. Water dripped off the ends of his hair and coasted down his shoulder, chest, jaw, dripping onto Olive, but she didn’t mind it one bit, because a couple of drips was easily better than a whole ocean. Also the droplets had been warmed on Rory’s skin before landing on hers and there was something grounding about that. Like he was resuscitating her without trying.
His worried expression drifted in and out of the sunlight, keeping his face mostly in the shadows, but occasionally she would get a peek at the set jaw, downward slashing eyebrows. He was on a mission to take her somewhere, but until he unlocked a door and carried her inside a dark locker room, she didn’t speculate on where.
“This is the Hut,” he murmured, adjusting his hold to bring Olive tighter against his chest as they passed through long rows of lockers, a slim, wooden bench running down the middle. “I’m going to catch hell for leaving the beach, but I just need to get you warmed up, sunbeam. You won’t stop shaking.”
“You either.”
She heard him swallow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Olive decided to let him get away with the lie. “You weren’t on duty when I got to the beach. Where did you come from?”
Rory didn’t answer as they passed beneath an arch into another room, separate from the locker area. And darker. He eased her feet to a tile floor. Before she could look around to discern their new location, Rory steadied her with his left hand and punched something above her head with his right—and holy blessed warm water went streaming down her head, shoulders and back, shocking her chilled skin with blissful heat.
She backed further into what could only be a shower and Rory followed, his grip reassuring on her elbow. “Ohhhh.” Her neck loosened, head tipping to one side. “That’s perfect. Totally worth almost drowning for.”
“Agree to disagree,” came his low voice from the other side of the spray. Olive peeked around the stream of water to find Rory battling concern…and something darker. Hotter. His inked chest lifted and fell in a staggered rhythm, steam from the shower dappling him with condensation. “Are you warmed up?”
His gravelly tone of voice turned Olive’s nipples to painful points. I’m wearing a bathing suit. No cover-up. Nothing. Her arms flew up to cross over her breasts, but that only pushed them up more, so she dropped her hands to their original position. “Did everyone see my boobs?”
“What?” His gaze sharpened and snapped to hers. “No. No one saw any part of you they shouldn’t.” He dragged a hand over his eyes. “But I’m seeing way too damn much right now, Olive. Are you warmed up?”
The word yes sprung to her lips, but no sound came out. She was alone in a dark shower with a man who’d stirred something to life inside of her. Something that made her feel…older. Feminine. She’d had crushes on neighborhood boys in the past and swore she’d experienced attraction. Nope. Nothing in her life had come close to the yearning that crawled all over her now, wreaking discomfort and emptiness in places she didn’t know such things were possible.
And God. God, it didn’
t help that Rory was absolutely gorgeous with his wet hair and cords of tan muscles, topped with tattoos so stark, they seemed freshly painted. That wasn’t what made her ache, though. No, his eyes did that. They betrayed how aware he was of Olive. That this gravitational force between them was not typical. It wasn’t typical at all.
She could no more say the words, “Yes, I’m warmer now,” than she could go about the rest of her day without drawing Rory closer. Finding some way to touch him. Be touched. Because if she said those words, they would leave this place. He’d put an end to this thing between them that he’d obviously deemed wrong.
“So…” Operating on their own terms, her fingertips traced the edge of her bikini bottoms. Rory’s eyes tracked their progress like a hunter, a violent shudder passing through him. “You’re not going to call me. You’re just going to be my personal rescue service?”
Restless hands flexed at his sides. “I don’t know how to answer that, Olive.”
“Try.”
A beat passed. His nostrils flared. “I made it through a day without calling you. I was trying to make it through another…and then I saw you in front of someone else’s chair, looking like a fuck fantasy that has no place in my head—” He cut himself off with a sharp exhale. “So I switched. I switched so I could be near you. I couldn’t help wanting to be near you.”
Fuck fantasy. Fuck fantasy. The words pinged around in her head like hailstones off a window. “I picked this bathing suit specifically for its modesty.”
“It didn’t work.”
“Oh.” Olive didn’t realize she’d stepped back until her shoulder blades pressed to the steam-covered tile wall and she nearly moaned at the sensation of something—anything—touching her skin. The hard surface made her feel provocative. Trapped. She wanted to be trapped between the tile and Rory. “Will you just come here?” she whispered.
A scrape of a sound left his mouth. “I don’t know if I can stop touching you once I start. I don’t know anything when it comes to you.”
The running water sluicing down from above sent wet hair into her face, obscuring her vision, so she pushed it back, let the damp warmth run over her lips. “Please?”
Rory lunged, growling, stopping just short of making contact. His hands slapped the tile above her head, his chest heaving. And then his mouth gave the barest brush of her temple and Olive almost collapsed under the rush of bliss, unable to trap her moan this time.
“Come on, Olive,” he said choppily. “Barely touching you and that body reacts like I’m giving it that first hard thrust. You’re killing me here.”
Trying to think clearly with a new, unfamiliar motor running deep within her body was a challenge, but Olive sensed she had to lure Rory closer. He was still managing to hold himself away from her and she wanted to snap that willpower in half. With a swallow, she settled the palms of her hands against Rory’s hard stomach and slid them over the muscular curve of his pectorals. “Thank you for saving me.”
His eyelids drooped, his rough exhale sending the shower steam into a swirl. “Don’t thank me. Just stop almost dying.” He appeared transfixed by her fingers as they splayed over his muscles. “Please?”
“I’ll think about it…” Slowly, she went up on her tiptoes and locked her wrists behind his neck. “If you kiss me.”
He advanced on her fast, ripping a gasp from her throat when he sandwiched her between his unyielding body and the tile wall. Oh my God. Every inch of him was created to correspond with every inch of her. Was that possible? “You think I’m the kind of man you play games with?” His hot puffs of breath fanned her mouth. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Tell me. After you kiss me.”
His laughter was harsh and lacking all humor. “You don’t want me to take what you’re offering, Olive. I’ll want more. I won’t be able to stay away from you.” Out of necessity, Olive pushed up and slid their lips together, making his body surge tighter against hers. “This new life of yours is only beginning, and mine…it never got started, all right? Don’t torture me,” he grated directly against her mouth.
“You’re torturing me,” she said breathily, beginning to grow frustrated with the lack of satisfaction. She needed it so badly without even knowing fully what it entailed. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“Stop.” He kissed her. Hard. “Stop.”
What had been the purpose of Olive’s mouth until this moment? As soon as her lips met Rory’s, they were given a new reason for existing. Despite his harsh command, there was no stopping once the kiss started. Olive was flattened against the wall, Rory’s fingers diving into her hair, weaving the wet strands between them. Olive’s arms went limp, dropping from his hair and remaining kind of suspended in a mid-air surrender as Rory’s mouth moved over hers, mastering it, ruining her for any other kiss in this lifetime. And then she could only use her hands to pull him close. Closer. Closer.
Oh God, she couldn’t get him to press her into the wall tightly enough. Her body was crying out for something she didn’t know how to ask for. Couldn’t ask for. Not with his tongue taking blatant, sexual ownership of her mouth. He found her tongue and wound it with his own, the bristle of his beard scraping her chin. Water trickled down between them, making the kiss wetter than it already was.
Olive curled her fingers into the waistband of his red shorts, arching her lower body and pulling Rory closer at the same time. Give me what I need. What do I need? At the same time she felt his erection, long and thick against her belly, his mouth let hers go on a guttural groan.
“Tell me what you want.” He teased her upper lip with his tongue. “You can’t have it unless you say it by name.”
“I-I…don’t know. I just want to stop aching.”
They fell headlong into a moaning kiss. “I want that, too, sunbeam.” His right hand left her hair, his palm curving to the side of her neck, traveling lower. Lower. “Can I touch you?”
Their eyes locked and she couldn’t look away from his combination of hunger and vulnerability. As if she might say no. Or not trust him. “Yes,” she whispered. “Anywhere.”
Heat flared in Rory’s face, but he hesitated, shaking his head. “God help us both,” he muttered, his hands finding her breasts and palming them. Tightly. Like they belonged to him. A line of electricity started at her nipples and rippled to her sex, making Olive’s thighs smack together with a loud sound. “There it is,” Rory said, cursing. “Been dreaming about those legs snapping together around my hips. Just like that.”
Later she might worry about coming across desperate, but in that moment, she could only care about making Rory’s words a reality. God. Oh God, she needed pressure against that suffering part of her anatomy. Now. She gripped his shoulders and tried to climb his hard wall of muscle, but he peeled her off with a denial, using his left hand to trap her wrists above her head. A willing prisoner.
“Uh-uh. No,” he gritted, pressing their foreheads together. “Not unless you want to fuck, Olive. If you sit that ripe, little body on my cock, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
The walls of her femininity clenched. Clenched at being spoken to—about—in such a way. To be desired this way…to have the proof of her own appeal prodding her in the stomach was a powerful thing. Especially because his appeal was equally vast. The feel of his skin, the intensity of his eyes, the smell of sunscreen and mint and male. A streak of recklessness she’d never encountered spoke on her behalf. “That’s what I want. The ache…”
A heavy shudder moved through Rory, and since they were plastered together, it vibrated her body along with his. “You don’t mean that,” he said thickly, his right hand dropping, slowly cupping her sex and pressing, pressing, grinding his palm against it, drawing a shocked sob from Olive. “You’ve never had a man anywhere near this, have you?”
“No,” she gasped.
“Fuck.” He pressed his middle finger to her clit, massaging her through the wet material of her bikini bottoms. “Taking
this for myself will earn me a place in hell.”
“No it won’t.”
“It’s not happening,” Rory cut in harshly, quieting her with a hard kiss. “I can take away the ache other ways.” Olive’s knees weakened as Rory knelt down on the tile floor, the spray rushing over his head as he leaned in, exhaling against the triangle of her bottoms once, twice, before tugging them down to her ankles, devouring the sight of her. “Son of a bitch. It’s as beautiful as the rest of you,” he rasped, pressing his mouth and nose to her intimate flesh, breathing her in. “Last chance, Olive. Tell me I shouldn’t lick your virgin pussy, baby, please.”
Yeah right. She’d been fantasizing for a long time about having sex, introduced to every aspect of intimacy through books. Even on the page, this kind of foreplay had never really appealed to her. Obviously, she’d been shortsighted since she was practically restraining herself from climbing onto his shoulders. Anything to stop the incessant flames from licking her skin. To stop the churn of frustration inside of her, begging for relief. “Rory.” She slipped her fingers into his hair and guided him closer. “I need you.”
“You had to say that.” He pushed his closed mouth up against her softness, his big shoulders lifting and falling on a groan, then his lips began moving in the open-mouthed writhe of a kiss, the action shifting the flesh shielding her core, easing the sides apart, exposing her clit. His upper lip grazed her nub gently, and Olive almost hit the ceiling. Her reaction seemed to drive Rory a little crazy, his fingertips digging into her hips, yanking her lower body closer to his mouth. The hard, slick glide of his tongue separated her flesh further and journeyed over her clit in a slow, deliberate lick. “Goddamn, you taste so fucking sweet. You going to melt on my tongue like a good girl, Olive?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“You make sure to tell me when you’re going to come.” He razed the inside of her thigh with his teeth, then returned to her private flesh, parting her with another thorough lick. “I want to lap up as much as I can before the shower washes it away.”